Gambling Was No Gamble
Gambling Was No Gamble One remarkable fact stands out in the story of Phenk Gty. Nobody ever gambled there. Its famous old Dilling- ham Street has been mis-named the "Gamblingest Street in the World." While it's true that a dozen places along a single block of this street annually took in sums from dice tables and slot machines that would rival rhe operating budget of a city like Birmingham or Miami, nevertheless if gambling is defined as the staking of money on the hope of a return of more money, the Phenix City brand couldn't qualify. The sucker who entered a gambling house had al- most no chance at all of coming out with his roll intact, much less of carrying away any house money There seemed to be only one exception to that rule in Phenix. Old time gambling figures say that a straight dice game could be had at the Bama Club when it was operated by J. Hoyt Shepherd and Jimmy Matthews, partners in the old S & M Amusement Company. It was in the Bania Club that the biggest games were held. Witnesses report seeing over one hundred thousand dollars cross the dice tables in a single evening. One of the co-authors of this book has seen thousands of dollars on the dice tables there at one time. After Shepherd and Matthews became es- tablished as the gambling kingpins of the cit)% having amassed fortunes, they apparently decided rhat honesty was the best business policy for a gambling house. They knew, at least, that in order to attract the big money from the nonh and east, they would have to give the customers a fair shake for their money. Riding with only the regular house odds. Shepherd and Matthews operated "no limit'* games of crap and high dice. The "pallet" or bank which they put up as a target some- times amounted to fifty thousand dollars, with an almost 70 Gampumg Was No Gamble 71 iinhmitcd reserv-e fund behind it. The house sometimes won huge sums, as on VJ night in 1945 when a gambler from nearby Columbus, Georgia, dropped his roll of sixty-four thousand dollars within a few hours. On the other hand, the house was hit for large sums on occasion, dropping about thirty-five thousand one slow after- noon when there were only three persons at the dice table. The Bama Club attracted big-time gamblers from New York, Chicago, Miami, Birmingham, Boston and other major cities. After the place was closed by National Guardsmen following the murder of Patterson, General Hanna checked air traffic from the major cities to Columbus and found that it was off by about fifty per cent. Many of the big gambling figures flying down for the lush pickings in Miami during the winter season, would stop off in Phenix for a warm-up at the Bama. Many of them got no further, having been picked clean on the green dice fields of the club on Dillingham, The Bama offered gambling in almost any form the cus- tomer might choose- It had slot machines, roulette, black- jack and poker, as well as a modem horse-room where you could bet on the nags or buy a parlay on football or baseball. Drinks and food were on the house to good customers, and for their entertainment while they g-ambled, a big-time or- chestra and floor show were offered. About two years before Patterson was killed, Shepherd iind Matthews announced with much fanfare that they were quitting rhe rackets. They surrendered more than five hun- dred thousand dollars wonh of slot machines, and turned the management of the Bama Club over to new hands. The new operators were Stewart McCoUistcr, a protege of Shepherd and Matthews, J. D. Abney, Clyde Yarbrough and J. D. (Frog) Jones. The new management did not hold strictly to the idea of giving the customer an even break, and there was a substantial decline in the business coming in from rhe north and east. But they still offered gambling of every type, including lottery, and sold fireworks as a side tine. All types of fireworks are illegal in Alabama. 1 r 72 PinEMix City But outside The Baina Club, rhere was no rrue "gambling," in the sense of wagering, in Phenix City. Sloe machines were set to pay off only about five cents on the dollar; poker and black-jack cards were marked, deals were crooked, cards were stacked, dice either were loaded or shaved, and lottery drawings were often rigged. In addition ro cutting to a minimum any chance for the sucker to win, [n,iny of the low-class gambling joints resorted to muggings or robbery when it appeared that a customer who didn't gamble was about to leave with any substantial part of his roll intact. If your pocketbook couldn't stand the gaff at The Bama, you could find a smaller, but still substantial game at Bennie's Club, just on the other side of Dillingham Street. If dice was not your wish, there M^as blackjack or poker at al- most any one of the score of joints on Dillingham Street within spittin' distance of each other. You could hear the dick of tfie roulette wheel at The Bama, The Ritz, The Old Original, Bennie's or The Bridge Grocery. From J 942 until 1950, there were more than a thousand slot machines in operation in Phenix City and Russell County at all times. The number was greatly reduced after Shepherd and Mat- thews left the field in 1951, to become political fixers and landlords of gambling. Just the week before Patterson was murdered, he iiad joined with Hugh Benrley and others in requesting Governor Gordon Persons to order an all-out gambling raid in Russell County. The raid had first been planned for the night of June I8-the exact time that Patterson met his executioner in an alley outside the Coulter Building. But because of the detail necessar)^ in planning such an operation, the raid had been postponed until the following week. The gambling clan seem gifted with a peculiarly valuable faculty. Things snid behind closed doors in Montgomery, the capital, could be heard clearly in Phenix. Consequently, on the night that Patterson had his teeth knocked out by bullets. OAMBLmc Was No Gamblk I 7a gamblers were busy iiauling slot machines from dives along Fourteenth Street and Dillingham, and storing them in ware- houses, homes, cellars and under improvised rents in the thick woods that surround the city. Patterson's death broughr on an immediate "cleanup" drive by the local authorities, assisted by a few members of the Alabama Highway Patrok The raids netted nearly one hundred slot machines, horse race machines and similar de- vices, is well as a number of moth-eaten gambling tables. It was the type of "cleanup" that citizens knew so well. Several of them slyly pointed out that most of the machines seized were old and inoperative. Some of them were junked ma- chines that were being dismantled for parrs. The dice tables brought in from this series of raids bore about as much re- semblance to the tables used at Hcnnie's or The Bama Club R>j a race horse docs ro a plow mule. Citizens knew from experience that it was neither de- sirable nor effective to report matters concerning gambling to local authorities. But many people did seek out newspaper men and "tip" them on locations of operating slot machines, dice tables and other gambling devices. A few more raids were made as a result of these tips, with reporters and pho- tographers standing by to see the job done. Showing his utter contempt of the cleanup, "Red" Cook Itad stored a large number of his machines in a As^arehouse on rourrcenth Street, right in the hearr of the city's residential :nid business section. It was the same warehouse where he li^d always put his machines when the heat w^as on tem- porarily. This citadel fell before the Guardsmen while Cook fussed, fumed and found fault—all to no avail. The gambling raids staged by the Guard were well planned and executed. As gambling devices were pulled from one of the clip houses, a CID man w^ould tag it for later identifica- tion, and list the names of witnesses present. It was on this infonnation that nearly five hundred gam- 74 Phenpw City Gambling Was No Gamble 75 bling indictinenrs have been brought by the Grand Jury, with almtKt all of the defendants entering pleas of guilty as their cases came up for trial. Intensive raiding by Guardsmen -ft^ent on for three days following the kickoflf on July 24. Duiing this entire time. Special Solicitor George C. Johnson personally supervised the gathering of evidence. In this he displayed the same methodical procedure that was to prove so successful before the Grand Jury and in subsequent prosecutions of the Phenix City mobsters. Evidence gathered in the raids was sufficient to bring charges against almost every gambling figure in Phenb: City, big and little. Where warning devices were found in gambling houses, special care was taken in preserving the evidence for felony indictments, Alabama law makes it a felony to install and operate a warning device in a gambling house. AH other types of gambling charges are misdemeanors. Bur Soliciror Johnson was not pleased or happy about the results of the raids. The fiery prosecutor from Nonh Alabama was disappointed on examining the evidence to find that the two biggest fish, Shepherd and Matthews, were not in the net. He confided to friends that he would consider the entire operation a failure unless Shepherd and Matthews could be brought to law. Weeks passed and the list of indictments grew with each new session of the Grand jury. Johnson and his associate, Conrad Fowler, of Columbiana, worked long hours over evi- dence and before the Grand Jury aided by Highway Patrol- men Louis Phillips and John Williams. The temperature in August hit one hundred degrees and inched above. Johnson and Fowler loosened their collars, rolled their sleeves higher and conrinued to dig in. Then one night in mid- August Johnson obtained records showing ownership of some of the gambling establishments and Johnson confided that he thought he could at last hook Shepherd and Matthews. To do this he used an old Alabama "Gypsy Law" passed about 1873 and inactive on the statute books since before the mm of the century. The law makes it a misdemeanor for any person to rent or lease any property with the knowledge that it will be used for gambhng. Tlte law was designed as a method of prevent- ing persons from allowing roving Gipsy bands or river boat gamblers to ply their trade in the rural communities of Ala- I bftma in the early frontier days. Til is was war, and it was necessary to use any ammunition available. Armed with the old statute, plus proof that Shep- herd and Matthews had rented places for gambUng, Johnson. I went back before the Grand Jury. This time he came om with four indictments against each of the kingpins. Both Shepherd and Matthews served ninety day hard labor senrences. They entered pleas of guilty to two of the counts and the remaining two counts against each of them were dropped, * * n Mention was made earlier in this chapter of the marked cards and loaded dice used in the gambling houses. These \v^ere stricrly home products, and were distributed by Horace Webster, alias "Pat" Webster, who operated a small factory down on Long Street. Webster studied his trade in Portland, Oregon, and New York City in 1953. His wares were shipped to the Mississippi gold coast and Savannah, Georgia, as well as being distributed in Phenix City. When Guardsmen raided his establishment they found all kinds of equipment for loading dice or shaving them. The marked cards and other crooked devices were ordered from a wholesale house in Chicago and one in Los Angeles. Web- ster maintained a list of customers, which included most of the Phenix City establishments and gambling casinos throughout Alabama and several surrounding states. An Army corporal stationed at Fort Benning, but living in Phenix City, was on the customer Ust. He was found to 76 Phenix Cm- operate a dice and card game on the post where he regularly fleeced his buddies. Webster readily admitted that he handled "expert" ecjuip- ment, but said he only recently had gone into the manufac- turing field. Seized along with his customer lists were catalogues, show- ing illustrations and price Ibts. Since there were no stamtes in the state code deahng with the manufacture or sale of crooked gambling equipment, Webster was charged with possession of gambling parapS\emalia. Slot machines, particularly the roscoe type, a lever- operated device son^etimes called "one-armed bandit," offer die gambling operator the surest return of any gambling device. They can be set to pay off any percentage the operator wishes, and that figure is based upon what he thinks the players will stand for. In Las Vegas, Nevada, for instance, machines are said to pay off from sixty to eighty percent of the amount taken in. This is good adv^ercising and increases the volume of business. In Phenis City most of the machines paid off ten percent, or less. The house men didn't figure it was necessary to advertise, since customers were usually hned up to put their money in the machines anyway. Before turning in their slot machines in 195 1, the Shepherd- Matthews Syndicate had machines in most of the better loca- tions in the city, as well as in scores of filling stations, grocery stores, cafes and night spots in Russell County. Their chief mechanic, -who looked after the machines and fixed the percentages, was C, \V. Franklin. Franklin was tJie foreman of the Russell County Grand Jury at the rime Albert Patterson was killed, and, under ordinary circum- stances, this gambler would have been one of the eighteen men to have considered any evidence that might have been brought before a Grand Jury at that time. However, the entire body, along with the Jury Commission that put theit names in the jury box, was superseded by a special Grand Gambling Was No Gamble 77 Jury organized from a new jury box to hear all cases growing out of the cleanup. After the Kefauver Senate Committee hearings in 1950, certain teeth were put into the federal gambling laws. Gam- blers were required to buy federal stamps each year, and to pay ten percent of their net proceeds to the government. Anotlier law made it a federal offense for slot machines to be carried across a state line, or for slot machine parts and other gambling devices to be handled in interstate commerce. These restrictions were the most serious blow struck at organized gambling up to that time. Then the Alabama Legislature made the owning of a gambling stamp prima facie evidence of guiit. Tlie Shepherd-Matthews combine exited from the active gambling field. Most of the Phenix City "sportsmen" rallied quickly and bought gambling stamps for business as usual. They obviously were not worried about prosecutions in Russell County. The special Grand Jury was ordered by Special Judge Walter B. Jones, as one of his official acts after being ap- pointed by the Alabama Supreme Court to preside over legal phases of the clean-up. This put Franklin and his Grand Jury out of business. Franklin was discovered to have been owner of a federal gambling stamp at the same time he was Grand Jury foreman. He was caught in the gambling dragnet, indicted and pleaded guilty. His sentence, in two cases, was originally fixed at two years, the heaviest term imposed on any gambler. It was later reduced to one year, which he began serving in December, 1954. But none of the mob relished the idea of tangling with Uncle W^hiskers, by shipping slot machines or pans across state lines. The price of a nickel slot machine— around |300 in Chicago— suddenly jumped to 1 1,000 in Phenix City. To meet the new emergency, it was necessary to have facilities at home to reproduce parrs for tlie machines when they ^vore out. A few selected mechanics were sent off for factory train- 7$ Phenix City ing. One of the men who became expert m machining pans for slot machines was Felron Cobb, nephew of the late Hoiner Cobb, strong mmi mayor of Phenix City. Felton Cobb operated a radio shop in the rear of his modest home. Neighbors knew that he was always swamped with work even when business was slow for others. One day Mili- tary Police Chief, Colonel James N. Brown rook a crew of Guardsmen to investigate the shop. Inside the concrete block structure they found a modern slot machine factory with nearly a score of slot machines and large quantities of parts. They also found a reel of eight millimeter movie film of the type shown at stag smokers. Cobb was indicted for possession of gambhng equipment and obscene film, aSthough the latter charge was dropped after he entered a plea of guilty to the gambling charges. The return from slot machines added up to an enormous figure. At one time, before Shepherd and Aiatthews quit the business, the machines averaged §9,000 weekly in the Phenix City Pool Room, owned by Shepherd and Matthew*s, and an almost unbelievable $12,000 weekly from the Ritz Cafe, where tottery drawings were held daily. Over-anxiety to learn about slot machine operations at The Rire and other places, nearly resulted in serious conse- quences for one of the authors of this book. This episode is related as it happened, to the individual writer. It was abour two weeks after the Patterson murder and before the National Guard had been given real authority to pohce the city. The writer had made contact through a third person to learn about gambling operations from an inside source. The meeting was arranged for about 10:30 P.M. in a thickly wooded area about three miles from Phenix City, and near the Lee County line. The meeting was made without mishap, and the author's automobile was concealed, a mile off the main highway, and a few^ yards off a little-used dirt road. The dome hght of the car was turned on while the in- Jormant explained the gambhng layout of various places, and C^AMBLiNc Was No Gamble 79 drew diagrams. He also furnished details of slot machine loca- tions and the approximate take from each place. ^Vhiie the conference was tmderway, an automobile passed back and forth within a few yards of where the author and his informant were concealed, the car engine laboring through rhe deep sandbeds. The meeting was hastily adjourned, the lights cumed off, and hiding places selected in the nearby bushes. While both the writer and his companion were armed, neither relished the idea of a showdown in that lonely pine rhicket. When the car had gone, the conference was hurriedly finished and the writer and his companion parted company for the trip back to Phenix City. Once on the highway, the author checked carefully for c^r lights and saw none until hb car iiad traveled a izvf hun- dred yards past t\\^z new National Guard Armory. At that point a car, traveling at high speed, approached frotn the rear. When this writer's car slowed for a railroad crossing, the approaching vehicle came on with a sudden burst of speed and swer^'ed toward the lead car, forcing it into a shallow, sand-fijled ditch and up the side of a clay bank. The other car slowed inomentariiy, then whipped quickly back on the road and raced away toward Phenbi, After regaining control of his car, the author gave chase in an effort to get the license number of the other vehicle. Tt was a Georgia tag, but bent upwards in such a manner as to be unreadable. After losing the car near the railroad station, a call was placed to Guard Headquarteis and jeep patrols were put on the search. The vehicle, by then, had a rwo-mile start and very Ukely was across the river in Columbus before Guards- men reached the scene. An examination of the point where the car liad left the road revealed that it was but thirty )-ards from a steel bridge abutment. Below was a rocky gorge ten feet deep. The scare technique employed bv the gamblers is out- 80 Phenix City lined here to emphasize the desperate measures the hard- pushed mobsters were prepared to take to protect their threatened vice empire. The maneuver of running people off the road was to be repeated several times. Among those forced from the road was an agent for the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, and L, B, Sulhvan, direcror of the Alabama Depart- ment of Public Safety, Threats of death or bodily harm were made against several persons identified with the clean- up, including Governor Persons, Mrs. MacDonald Gallion, who was the wife of the governor's personal representative, this author, and othere. Governor Persons said there had been four such death threats made against him or members of his family. For a while he toted a .38-caUber revolver, with which he was an expert, and had an armed guard stationed at his door. He had the executive mansion guarded by four armed watchmen and the grounds swept with floodlights. The governor confided to the authors that four times during a single week he had his private telephone line changed because it had been tapped by parties unknown. Gallion learned of the threat against his wife when he received a telephone call from Mrs. Gallion in Montgomery. Mrs. Gallion had just left a hotel in Columbus, Georgia, two hours earlier, where she had been visiting her husband. Obviously frightened, Mrs. Gallion rold of answering her telephone that was ringing as she entered her Montgomery home, about eighty miles from Columbus. The man's voice, she said, outlined her every movement after leaving Colum- bus, and warned her that everyone connected with the clean- up was being watched. She was rold ro get her husband off the case. "If we can't get to him," the caller warned, "w^e can get to you or the children." Gallion hastily arranged for his wife and t^vo children to go away to a safe place in Florida, and continued on the Job. These were hopeful signs to all those involved In the Gambling Was No Gamble 81 iipcration of cleaning up the gambling empire. It showed that the mobsters had their backs to the ^vall and were Hghting back with the only weapons they knew— force and fear.